Economical drilling for shale gas requires reuse of flowback and produced waters. The flowback water is generally used for initial fracking purposes of wells while the produced water when adequately prepared to required specification of total dissolved solids, density, etc. can be used for well closures and well turnovers. Such produced waters are called heavy brines.
Conventional techniques for preparing heavy brines involve treatment of produced waters by using thermal evaporation equipment. However, some current activities show those techniques to have limited cost effectiveness.
The present invention is directed towards overcoming one or more of the above-identified problems.